Is the proliferation social media and constant web connection benefiting or hurting us? When is the last time you made an effort to memorize a phone number?Are we raising a generation of social idiots?Or does writing your thoughts by posting them cause you to realize the gaps in your opinions, forcing you to research and form a more thoughtful response, make us more enlightened?Or does the ability to communicate with like minded people who may be just as wrong as you only entrench ignorance?Thoughts.

Captain Awesome wrote:No, I understand why would it be handy to remember the number in a situation like this. I'm just not sure how remembering a number can make me less of a social idiot or make me more enlightened.

I think it is making us too dependable on technology. Kind of when your TV remote stops working or you can't find it. One spends hours looking for it instead of just getting up and changing the channel the old fashioned way LOL!

I think smartphones/superphones are awesome, they do everything know. As I've posted before, my whole life is in mine, all my loyalty program cards are in it, my boarding passes for my flights, all my contact info, the internet, photo albums, navigational tools, entertainment, books, etc.

Growing up, I remember everyone hiding their faces behind newspapers, so I don't think we're anymore socially inept, but technology dependent is another thing all together ...

I'm not worried what I say, if they see it now or they see it later, I said it. If you don't know maybe that would hurt you, I don't know. You should know though, so you don't get hurt, so you know what side to be on when it happens.T.Tsarnaev

Captain Awesome wrote:No, I understand why would it be handy to remember the number in a situation like this. I'm just not sure how remembering a number can make me less of a social idiot or make me more enlightened.

Interesting how people take only a few words out of a group of sentences and put them back together in a way so they miss the point.

Regarding raising a generation of social idiots, unless you're under 16, which I'm assuming you're not, then you have not grown up with the nanny smartphone. Kids who learn to commicate almost exclusively online through Facebook or through texting miss out on some social skills. Things like looking you in the eye while speaking. Or my favourite which is when they hear their phone in mid sentence and allow it to interupt a face to face conversation.

Regarding enlightenment. Much of the world's computer use is on the smart phone. So in general, when you post comments on a forum it is the same as writing a short article on a subject. And when you write your thoughts down and allow others to pick them apart you realize you may have gaps in facts to back up your opinions. Forcing you to research and see what people with other opinions are basing it on. It makes you reconsider some of the things you thought were cut and dry.

But another thing access to a computer allows now is to find other like minded people you would never have met. So if you are narrow minded or naive about subjects you wont encounter any resistance. If anything it justifies your view and may even take it another step farther. For example, Muslim clerics now can preach to anyone on YouTube who is marginalized and lead them down a incorrect train of logic that says the western world are nothing but a group of infidels and should be killed. So by interconnecting like minded people you actually polarize thier view point more. IMO it's one of the reasons politics are so polarized these days.

Don't get me wrong, I think the smart phone is a combination of many of mankind's greatest technological achievements crammed into a device that fits in your pocket. It's changed the world and I was asking if it's for the good. We can't put the Jeannie back in the bottle but I find it intersting exploring its impact on mankind.